Star Wars Episode 7 To Shoot in Early 2014 for 2015 Release

For those worried that the hiring of J.J. Abrams might mean a delay in production on the now-Disney owned “Star Wars” franchise’s latest film, you can breathe better now. Abrams himself, during a producer’s conference in Hollywood, has confirmed that “Star Wars: Episode 7″ will shoot as planned early next year in London, just in time for its planned 2015 release.

Abrams is apparently not a big fan of shooting overseas, and would have rather done the gig in Los Angeles, but that decision was out of his hands since Disney has always intended to shoot in London.

As to how he plans to approach “Star Wars”, the man who made “Star Trek” cool again to the general populace with two rebooted “Trek” movies had this to say:

I think that the thing is so big and so massive to so many people that the key to moving forward is honoring but not revering what went before.

Honestly, though, isn’t that how he did “Star Trek”? I always thought those two movies nodded back at the originals, but didn’t feel like it had to stick to them, and it didn’t.

Abrams has said many times that “Star Wars” is THE franchise he’s always wanted to do, while “Trek” was always a side thing, so it’ll be interesting to see how/what he does on a series that he grew up loving.

Michael Arndt is writing the script for “Episode 7″, which will follow on the previous 6 movies that George Lucas did, though absolutely no one knows where it’s going or who will be involved, though it’s pretty much been confirmed that you can expect to see the original three — Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher – reprising their respective roles from the original trilogy in there somewhere.